Empyre #2

[laughing_tree]

Generally, when you talk about "big consequences" in these interviews, it means somebody's dying, or somebody's coming back to life - and maybe one of those things is true, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about getting my arms deep in the gears of Marvel Space and setting up how they mesh together from here on. -- Al Ewing

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Nailbiter Returns #2

[cyberghostface]

( Scans under the cut... )

Amazing Spider-Man #45

[cyberghostface]

 

( Scans under the cut... )

The Best Page from Last Week's 2000ad - Prog 2191

[shakalooloo]

Judge Dredd is fighting the four horsemen of the apocalypse, The Diaboliks are performing sex-magic in a cemetary, The Out has finally shown where it's heading and The Order is still near-incomprehensible, but let's take a look at the much less extreme Full Tilt Boogie, by Alex de Campi and Eduardo Ocana:
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W.I.T.C.H. #19

[leahandillyana]

W.I.T.C.H. was a strange thing. Created by Italian team (writer Elisabetta Gnone and artist Alessandro Barbucci), the story follows the conventions of a Japanese genre (magical girls) and has Japanese art style (manga) while the lore is inspired by Chinese mythology and the setting is a fictional British town, and was later adapted into an animated series by a French studio (SIP Animation). It can be said that without W.I.T.C.H., there would be no Avatar - it was the earliest successful animesque work in the West, with concepts like generations of magical guardians with elemental powers being advised by deceased guardians being a novelty even by genre standards, at least then. While the plots were pretty shallow, they were also complex and the heroines were well developed. What I especially liked was that they weren't instant friends, and the teamwork was indeed teeth clenched. In the excerpt below, two heroines, Will and Hay Lin, meet with a guardian from previous generation.
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The Dollhouse Family #1

[cyberghostface]

"The brief was wide open. Write a horror book that's genuinely scary and does something new and interesting. I thought about it for about a day and a half, and then the idea for Dollhouse Family popped up like toast. I suspect it's got The Haunting of Hill House and Locke and Key in its DNA somewhere, but we've tried our best to make it be its own thing. Certainly it's going to look both gorgeous and terrifying." -- Mike Carey

( Scans under the cut... )

Lords of Empyre: Emperor Hulkling

[leahandillyana]

This one shot canonized an unlikely couple. Spoilers!
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Tom Defalco's Lois Lane

[ozaline]

So I've been slowly trying to build up a collection that includes every pre-Crisis Supergirl appearance. recently I've turned my attention to the Superman Family series (which brought the Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and other comics under one banner).

There's a lot of great Supergirl stories in there particularly ones by Elliot S Maggin, but the real surprise for me was how interesting some of the Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen stories got. Particularly the ones by Tom Defalco. While Superman Family still had it's share of Lois Lane body horror stories and/or stories of her trying to entrap Superman in marriage (some of which were reprints of silver age material, to be fair)... She really got to be a much more active protagonist and got to do a lot of actual investigative journalism. (plus there's an ongoing arc with those two where separate threads lead both to the DNA Project for a very epic storyline)

Tom Defalco really played to the idea that Lois was an expert in the Kryptonian Martial Art Klukor thanks to time she's spent in Kandor, and she doesn't need anyone to save her. She gets some rather savage beat downs, and some great one liners.

Defalco's dialog might have been a bit on the nose with the woman's lib stuff, nevertheless I really like his take on Lois.

Scans are from Superman family #185 (the first Defalco story for her, I believe), where she has to face her own internalized sexism.

and #189 where she and her sidekick, the human cannonball bust up an illegal gambling den.

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All-America Comix #1: The Z in Me

[superboyprime]

'I’m grateful when anything I’ve created (or co-created) goes on to have any kind of life of its own. The way that certain characters have connected with certain fans is a really special, beautiful thing. But I’m also grateful that I’m in a position to be able to travel down my own creative avenues when I feel like it...and that’s all we’re doing here. It’s not meant to diminish what anyone else happens to like. This is "comicbooks." There’s room for all of us.' - Joe Casey

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